St. Paul daily globe., 1887-09-18
KILLED BY HER OORsETs.
A Physiological Lesson Deduced
From London Inuuest.

KILLED By HER CORSETS.
A Physiological Lesson Deduced
10 From a London Inquest.
Recently an inquest was heard on a
single woman, fifty-twoy years of age resid-
ing in the Gloucester road, Regents park,
who had died suddenly as she was leav-
ing Park Chapel. The house surgeon
of the Northwest London hospital, who
had made an examination of the body,
testified before the coroner that she was
a woman who had laced very tightly.
In fact, she must at all times
have found ordinary respiration
task of extreme difficulty, and
ultimately, the lungs not being
allowed free play, blood vessel had
burst, producing SyncOpe and death.
The jury returned verdict in accord
ance with the evidence, and we are en-
titled to ask whether the most recent
addition to the list Of victims to tight
lacing will have any influence in stay
ing the prevalence of barbarOuS and
misehieyOus fashion. 1t is much, how
of the medical faculty, reiterated over
and over again, will fail to persuade la
dies that tight lacing is sure means of
running their health and very often has
fatal results: while it will be quite as
difficult to persuade the fair sex that
the vast majority of sensible men look
upon an ''hour-glaSS" or s'waSp" waist
as not only ugly, but ridiculous. The
instrument of construction applied to
the chest was an invention of depraved
vanity. with view of giving to
the female figure a supposed
iiiigghtness which it ought not to
possess, or to co1lcoaaa, Ssoome deformi-
ties which stays very frequently aggfa-
yate instead of allaying. Jean Jacques
Rousseau, with all the power of his
genius and all the warmth of the inter-
est which lie took in youth, exposed the
lanentable corruption of taste which
asserts that the figure is excellent in
proportion to the waist. The philoso-
pher OF Geneva exercised more social
influence perhaps in his time than any
writer i'll Europe, and for while stays
went out of fashion in France. Stiff
cOrsetS were still worn by the ladies of
the old court, but sensible mothers came
to a common agreement that their
daughters should subject themselves to
this voluntary punishment at as late
period as possible, and not until their
wedding day were they allowed to wear
stays. The Revolution swept away the
corset altogether, as well as hoop petit
coats: ibut stays again made their ap-
empire. A very harmless affair,
scarcely broader than the fasci@ mamiI-
lares OF the Romans, was the imperial
bodice, for waists were then worn eX-
cessively short, and the stays were
Without buskS, stiff pieces of whalebone
oriisteel plates. Modified, however, as
they were, the strong common sense of
Napoleon revolted against the reintrO-
duction of the garment. s'CorviSart,'
said the ruler, whose business it was to
know everything, to'his physician, ''the
cOfsetiS coquetry of the worst taste; it
tortureS women and maltreats their
progeny; it means friyOlity, it heralds
decadence."
These words were full of sagacity,
but when the mysterious DEGREES of
faShiOn-decreeS which are as occult as
those of fate-brought about the revival
of long waists, tight stays became once
more the mode, and the female chest
of torment, the steel busk, which had
originally been brought into France i'm
1882 by Catherine de Medicis. The busk
was long, flat, rigid strip of wood or
whalebOne, and sometimes of metal.
The old surgeons, Roderick and AM
brOise Pare, had inveighed against it;
MOntaigne and Riolau had laughed at
it; the Able Outlet had preached
against it; the Emperor Joseph had
striven to drive it out of Austria by Or
daining that all women leading
immoral lives should wear stays
with stiff busks. Medical warm
ings, satire, sermons, edicts of police,
had all been in vain. In the present
orb frtt loo ic,f Foe e,,I
prevalent, and is Staying its thousands
of silly yotaries every year, the busk has
ceased to be an instrument of torture.
1t is an integral part of the corset,
whereas the old busk, which was COW
cred with chamOiS leather, could be
made to slide in and out in vertical
tuck in the front of the stays. The
modern busk is fastened and divided
down the middle like the tree of
Mexican saddle: it is made of very
flexible steel, which should give to
every movement Of the body, and ssper
se' it is wholly innocuOus portion of
the corset The mischief and the peril
are at the back. Fifty years ago Lon
don staymakef named Mills introduced
an improved formation of stay-making.
the texture elastic, and wholly banishing
upright pieces, but the greatest of evils
escaped and continues to escape rem
edy. Nearly all Staymakers render the
structure of the corset sufficiently mar
row to allow of its being drawn at the
back far too tight for the health of the
wearer. Sensible ladies leave the per-
manent lacing of the interval at the back
of their stays untouched. That interval,
according to high authority, should not
be less than an inch in breadth, so as to
leave the spinal column uncovered by
q l.
common sense. strain, tug, pull, and
haul at the lacing at the back of their
stays, or they hold ON to horizontal bar
put upin their dreSSing-rO while their
maids tug, pull, and haul at the stay
laces until the requiSit ''hour glass; or
wasp" effect is produced. Are there
any other results, it may be asked, from
this elegant process of garrotting the
female form. There are good many,
and we will venture to enumerate few.
On the authority of the most eminent
physicians and surgeons of the last two
generations it may be stated that in the
head Fight lacing produces giddiness,
headache, pain in the eyes, ringing in
the ears and bleeding at the nose. Hab-
ittal tight lacing will provoke that most
undesirable addition to the female COM
pl4xloh, a red nose. Tight lacing is
quite as miSchievous in the region of the
tlfdraXi to which it gives false support,
impeding the development of the nat,l-
raj support. 1t dispiaees the bones, de-
raflgesthe circulation, induces seirrhus
iilIthe tmammary glands, and ultimately
cahcefe and it is tolerably sure provo
csfiye Of lung disease, palpitation of the
heart and water in the chest. In the
abdominal region tight lacing may be
reekoned upon with tolerable confidence
to bring about loss of appetite, squeam-
IshneSs. indigestion, induration of the
Campin closely associated tight-facing
with squirting: Boaud said that
it led to polypus; Platner MAIN
tanned that to fiGht=la =lacinr mnthnrS